The social centre before it was occupied.
Photo © Enredadera Tetuán
On 3 February, the PN co-editors interviewed a key figure in the Centro Social Okupado la Enredadera (the Vine occupied social centre) in northern Madrid. The social centre is one small part of the huge, nonviolent, anti-austerity, non-hierarchical ‘15M’ movement which began in May 2011, and has shaken up Spanish politics and empowered millions of people.
Peace News What was the beginning of the social…
Opening the door to large-scale privatisation, the introduction of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act ‘marked the end of a national health service in England’, according to two contributors to this important and very timely book.
The coalition government’s plan to ‘reform’ the NHS did not appear in the election manifestos of either the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats. Indeed, the coalition agreement itself explicitly stated they would ‘stop the top-down…
I knew this book was going to be worth reading when the introduction began by quoting this intercept from a police radio report: ‘The clowns are organising. They are organising. Over and out.’
Aimed at activists – particularly those jaded at the prospect of another boring protest, just like the last one, or disheartened at the prospect of handing out leaflets on a Saturday afternoon to busy shoppers – it suggests that we blend art and politics to make activism more ‘compelling and…
The suicide on 9 November of Amaya Egaña, a woman facing eviction in Barakaldo in the Spanish Basque country, has sparked public outrage about Spanish mortgage laws. Polls the next weekend recorded 95% demanding a change in Spain’s mortgage laws. (Most Spanish families — 83%— own their own homes.) On the following Monday, the association of banks declared a two-year moratorium on evictions ‘in extreme cases’, pre-empting what they feared might come out of urgent negotiations between the…
Written in response to an international rising tide of anti-Roma racism, this collection of articles analyses the shift towards the politics of the far Right in Europe over the past six or seven years. A timely contribution to the much-neglected study of this oppression, it ranges from detailed case studies of the effects of state policy, to the examination of how the discourse of neo-Nazism divides communities.
Europe’s largest minority, with an estimated population of 10 million,…
‘Not again, not ever!’
In Rhymni (Rhymney), the United Valleys Action Group are bracing themselves for another environmental campaign on behalf of local communities.
UVAG who, with the support of Friends of the Earth Cymru, have just defeated plans for a ‘monster incinerator’ in the area, expect the Miller Argent consortium to apply for planning permission for an open-cast coal mine at Nant Llesg on Merthyr Common.
Nant Llesg is very close to Miller Argent’s infamous Ffos-y-…
This is an important new book on a topic that could hardly have greater political relevance or urgency.
Its author, April Carter, comes from a background of nonviolent activism and has established herself as a leading academic specialist in this field and in the broader arena of political philosophy. She examines ‘people power’ with dispassionate thoroughness, taking account of the conceptual ambiguities in the term itself and theoretical and practical issues related to its…
A group of 15 or so people who set up the Cwtch Community Centre in the empty Dolphin Hotel in Swansea city centre have vowed to carry on their work after being been evicted. In a story carried by the South Wales Evening Post, Rev, a member of Cwtch, said the group would carry on their work: ‘Cwtch has been providing a brilliant service to the community. When we open, people without homes take shelter here and elderly ladies come for coffee.’
The Dolphin Hotel has been unoccupied for…
As the BBC Newsnight economics editor, Paul Mason has become a familiar face on television over the last few years, reporting on the protest movements, revolutions and revolts that have been “kicking off” across the globe since 2009.
Mason is also a keen blogger, and it is these (albeit now cleaned up) postings that form the backbone of this electrifying new book.
The essence of his argument is that “we’re in the middle of a revolution caused by the near collapse of free-market…
Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty (ECAP), a claimants group based at the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh, is claiming ìa potentially crucial victoryî in the struggle of unemployed people to defend their rights.
"Peter", an unemployed ex-miner, has been attempting since 2009 to bring an ECAP representative to interviews with the Edinburgh office of A4E, a private contractor implementing compulsory "workfare" for the department of work and pensions.
A4E falsely accused Peter of…
As I write, we are on the eve of a last-ditch high court judgement on the long road to eviction at Dale Farm. At a time of great tension, outside activists like myself are deeply committed to resisting the eviction, yet in the media and in parts of the wider Gypsy and Traveller community, divisions have opened between direct activists and those pursuing legal approaches to preventing the eviction.
When I first visited Dale Farm, I asked myself whether activist visitors’ efforts to…
After much dithering, we ended up driving North on Sunday night heading for Dale Farm, ducking under the Thames at Dartford, and emerging in Essex, new and alien ground for us. Breaking right towards Basildon and then onto back roads, we were anticipating blocked roads and searches, and parked discreetly some distance from the site. We needn’t have worried. Walking in, there was an extraordinary air of calm, with a few quiet words of welcome and thanks from Travellers as we walked in the…
Dale Farm in Essex is the UK's largest Travellers' community. They have been fighting for ten years to remain there but now 500 people face eviction from 31 August. The Conservative-led Basildon council has set aside £18 million for an eviction, while supporters have set up a solidarity camp at the site.
There are mostly Irish Travellers at Dale Farm where many have lived for 30 years. They own the site but were refused planning permission because the land, a former scrap-yard, is…
At 4.45pm on 21 June, No Borders and refugee solidarity activists blockaded the access road to the Harmondsworth and Colnbrook detention centres near Heathrow airport, to stop a mass deportation flight to Baghdad.
About 70 Iraqi refugees, mostly Kurds, were due to be flown out on a specially-chartered flight at 11pm. They had been assembled at the centres from other detention centres around the country, including 20 from Campsfield who were on hunger strike against deportation.
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